The Mental Toll of "Be Grateful You're Here"

The Mental Toll of "Be Grateful You're Here"

From Ballet Help Desk by Jenny Huang and Brett Gardner

May 6, 2026 · 1h 29m · Episode 141

About this episode

The episode discusses the mental challenges faced by dancers and the importance of mental health tools in ballet training.

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BalletHelpDesk The corrections never stop. The casting is always uncertain. And somewhere along the way, many dancers learn to keep all of it behind a smile, because showing weakness feels like handing someone a reason to replace you. Josh Spell, Kari Brunson Wright, and Rachel Coates have all been in that studio. As former professional dancers (Josh and Kari at Pacific Northwest Ballet, Rachel at Kansas City Ballet), they understand this from the inside. Now, as licensed therapists and coaches, they've built the ILUMN Collective, an app and platform designed to give dancers the kind of mental and emotional tools to help navigate the often stressful times that inevatably arise during ballet training. In this conversation, the three founders get specific about what's actually happening in the minds of pre-professional dancers: the perfectionism that hardens into an inner critic, the body image challenges that develop quietly, the disembodiment that can take years (sometimes decades) to recognize and reverse. They talk about why gratitude culture in ballet can become a mechanism of control, what it looks like…

People in this episode

Hosts: Jenny Huang, Brett Gardner

Guests: Josh Spell, Kari Brunson Wright, Rachel Coates

Topics covered

  • mental health in ballet
  • dancer wellness
  • perfectionism
  • body image
  • gratitude culture
  • parenting in ballet

Keywords

  • ballet
  • mental health
  • dancers
  • wellness
  • perfectionism
  • body image
  • parenting

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: ILUMN Collective, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Kansas City Ballet

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